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The Academy of American Poets is the largest membership-based nonprofit organization fostering an appreciation for contemporary poetry and supporting American poets. For over three generations, the Academy has connected millions of people to great poetry through programs such as National Poetry Month, the largest literary celebration in the world; Poets.org, the Academy’s popular website; American Poets, a biannual literary journal; and an annual series of poetry readings and special events. Since its founding, the Academy has awarded more money to poets than any other organization.

Oklahoma

The current state poet laureate of Oklahoma is Jeanetta Calhoun Mish, appointed in 2017. Mish is the author of three poetry collections, most recently What I Learned at the War (West End Press, 2016). She is the recipient of several awards, including the Oklahoma Book Award and the WILLA from Women Writing the West. Mish is currently the editor of Mongrel Empire Press and serves as program director and professor of English at Oklahoma City University.

poems

A youngest brother turns seventeen with a click as good as a roar,
finds the door and is gone.
You listen for that small sound, hear a memory.
The air-raid sirens howled of summer tornadoes, the sound
thrown back against the scattered thumbs
of grain silos and the open Oklahoma plains
like the warning wail of

I. Call and Response
1
Plumbline of disaster, shadow storage
of the way thought travels, the opinion,
the sentiment, only assertion following silence,
only a way of everlasting breathing,
a verb searching for grammar too devoted

Sometimes I'm so lachrymose I forget I was there
with my darling—I call her my darling to make her
more anonymous, so she can't take up all the space
in my brain. But please, can I continue, or must I
look away from such openness, those spools of light
bringing red and fine threads of silver to her